Mumbai’s Garbage Gamble

**Mekhala Ranade

INTRODUCTION 

In the heart of the nation’s financial capital, alongside the city’s modern skyline, a mountain of waste towers, at some points going as high as 12 storeys. This is the Deonar landfill site, which has been operational since 1927 and after nearly 100 years, handles around 10% of the 6,000 metric tons of waste that Mumbai generates daily. All of the city’s waste is dumped at landfill sites spread out over the city at locations like Kanjur, Mulund and Gorai, but Deonar remains the most debated one. 

The people residing in nearby areas have borne the brunt of Mumbai’s poor waste management practices. Studies have shown how the unsegregated legacy waste accumulated at the site has caused health issues especially respiratory illnesses, eye-related infections to the residents. The average lifespan of a person living near the landfill is around 39 years, as compared to the average lifespan of any other person in Maharashtra which was 72.5 years in 2020. The residents of the nearby areas are battling more than one issues currently, with the BMC planning on a waste-to-energy plant at the site, the BMC floating a tender of Rs. 2368 Crores for cleaning of the landfill site and the BMC allotting some part of the landfill site for rehabilitation of the people affected by the Dharavi redevelopment project. 

WASTE-TO-ENERGY PLANT: A SOLUTION OR ANOTHER PROBLEM? 

For effective management of waste and to clear the Deonar site, the BMC has planned a waste-to-energy plant at the site. The project has been awarded to Chennai MSW for Rs 648 Crores with a design and build period of 40 months and an operations and maintenance period of 15 years. According to Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani the project is set to be commissioned within 3 months. The plant will process 600 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste daily, generating an estimated 17 million units of energy annually.

But there are clear environmental concerns regarding the plant. The locals have opposed it stating that the residents in the area already have major health related issues and introduction of such a project will exacerbate the issues that the locals are already facing. 

One of the primary concerns regarding waste-to-energy plants is that they emit CO2, a greenhouse gas. If the waste is of natural origins like paper or wood, then the CO2 was also originally absorbed from nature. But such plants also process man-made waste like plastic, which when burned will emit greenhouse gases. Another concern is that such plants also produce harmful pollutants such as furans, fly ash, acidic gases and toxins. 

There have been many waste-to-energy plants in the past in India, but only few have been successful. The first such plant was set up in Timarpur in Delhi in 1987, but it functioned only for 20 days. The main reason for the failure of these plants is because of the nature of the waste they have to process. Most of the waste sent to these plants is unsegregated and has inert content which is not suitable for burning in waste-to-energy plants. Mixed waste has high moisture content and needs supplementary energy to incinerate or it will not burn well. This supplementary energy is typically drawn from fossil fuels, which undermines the argument that electricity produced by WtE plants is completely clean. 

Moreover, as compared to waste in countries like USA, Germany, Sweden which have high calorific value, Indian waste has a much lower calorific value. The moisture content in the waste generated in India, especially domestic waste makes it harder to process in a waste-to-energy plant. According to Rule 21 of Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules, 2016, non-recyclable waste with calorific value of 1,500 kcal/kg or higher should be used to generate energy from waste. While the calorific value of waste in India varies from city to city, the average value ranges from 1,411 kcal/kg to 2,150 kcal/kg, with high moisture content. 

Law mandating source based segregation has been here for years, but the waste reaching Deonar is in no way segregated. It is a mixture of organic food waste, cardboard, paper, cloth and plastic waste, with very high moisture content. Given the history of unsuccessful plants in India, how is the BMC planning to keep the plant functioning if it continues to receive unsegregated waste

with high moisture content? Unless the BMC can guarantee the supply of well-segregated, low-moisture, high-calorific waste, the proposed waste-to-energy plant at Deonar risks becoming another high-cost, low-yield infrastructure failure. 

BMC faces a choice: either build the robust systems necessary to support this technology—or risk adding another chapter to the list of abandoned WtE projects. 

THE DHARAVI REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT: UPROOTING AN ECOSYSTEM 

The Government has undertaken an ambitious project – the one to redevelop Dharavi and to make it into a cluster of high-rises in an urban landscape. Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums, is situated on a prime land parcel just a stone’s throw away from the business hub BKC. The tall blue glass buildings alongside the slums and shanties of Dharavi paint a picture that showcase the divide that plagues modern day India. But the BMC and the Adani Group are all set to repaint the scene with this redevelopment project. 

The redevelopment project will be undertaken by a special purpose vehicle Navbharat Mega Developers Pvt. Ltd.. While the redevelopment takes place, the dwellers of the slums in Dharavi will have to be rehabilitated elsewhere. Various sites in Mumbai have been finalized for this, including in Mulund, Bhandup, Kanjurmarg and the most controversial one being Deonar, an active landfill. For this purpose, the BMC has earmarked 124 acres of land on the Deonar landfill for rehabilitation of the Dharavi slum-dwellers.  

The BMC has floated a tender of Rs. 2368.73 Crores to clean the Deonar Landfill. This is the largest tender ever floated by the civic body for waste management. The plan is to clean 185 lakh tons of legacy waste through the process of “bioremediation” where a biological system is employed to remove pollutants from water, soil or air. 

While the project aims to clean the site in 3 years, experts warn that this is not possible and the cleaning might take around 10 years. The surveying of houses in Dharavi has already begun. How is the BMC planning to shift the residents without ensuring a clean site first?

Moreover, such rehabilitation is not only unethical but also illegal. This decision clearly violates the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 (hereinafter Rules) and the Guidelines of the Central Pollution Control Board (hereinafter Guidelines). 

Schedule I of the Rules clearly state that after a landfill site has been closed, post-closure care must be done for at least fifteen years with a long term monitoring plan which would include monitoring leachate collection system, monitoring of groundwater in and around the landfill, maintaining the integrity and effectiveness of the final cover, making repairs and preventing run-on and run-off from eroding or otherwise damaging the final cover. 

Even after 15 years, the site can be considered for human settlement or otherwise only after ensuring that gaseous emission and leachate quality analysis complies with the specified standards and the soil stability is ensured. 

Rule 3.2 (h) of the Guidelines state that the closed landfill may be used for human settlement after 15 years of post closure care by ensuring gaseous emission and leachate compliance.  

But in reality, Deonar is not even closed yet, it is in fact one of the top methane hotspots of India. A 2024 Report by the Central Pollution Control Board on emissions from the Ahmedabad and Surat landfills, also highlights how Deonar on an average emits 6202 Kgs of Methane every hour! 

Deonar is an active landfill site which is completely unfit for human habitation and relocating people there is a blatant violation of their human rights and constitutional guarantees of a healthy life and reflects failure on the government’s part to provide even the most basic dignity to the residents of Dharavi. It disregards the numerous Supreme Court rulings including MC Mehta v Union of India (AIR 1987 SC 1086) and Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. UOI (AIR 1996 SC 1446) which held that under Article 21, Right to Life includes the Right to a healthy and clean environment. 

About 200,000 people residing near Deonar suffer from violations of constitutional guarantees due to the uncontrolled waste and health related implications of the Deonar landfill and now the administration wants the people of Dharavi to go through the same.

Beyond the shanties, the scurrying rats and the putrid smell of wet waste, Dharavi is a fully functioning economic hub which generates around 1 Billion US Dollars every year. It has many small scale home based businesses like stitching, leather factories, pottery, food processing, etc. It is also a recycling hub where a significant portion of the city’s plastic waste is recycled. This plastic recycling industry employs thousands of people. All of these businesses and industries work in tandem with each other, forming a chain, not just with people residing in Dharavi but also outside it. Most of these people will now have to shift to other places thus breaking this supply chain. Residents of Dharavi have been opposing rehabilitation outside of Dharavi ever since reports of redevelopment have surfaced. They have also been protesting against the ongoing survey. They claim that it is being carried out by a private body and their employees, without any government employee accompanying them. This has raised concerns regarding the transparency in the redevelopment project. 

WAY AHEAD 

The city stands at a crossroads between ambitious urban development and welfare oriented governance. 

While the BMC has announced big projects with impressive budgets, its execution continues to be marred by legal violations, lack of public consultation, and lack of transparency. The BMC remains answerable to the citizens of Mumbai —especially the communities most affected by these changes. The BMC cannot escape liability and accountability simply because the redevelopment project is also being undertaken by a private body. BMC is accountable and answerable to the people of Dharavi who are looking towards them to not uproot their livelihoods and homes. 

It is also important to address the NIMBYism in areas like Mulund and Kurla which are protesting rehabilitation of Dharavi residents to their areas as it would put a strain on the existing civic infrastructure and change the area’s demography. NIMBY i.e. Not In My Backyard is characterized by opposing development in their vicinity while not necessarily opposing similar development elsewhere. The residents of Mulund or Kurla are not necessarily opposed to

redevelopment of the Dharavi slums and the rehabilitation of the residents, they are just opposing the rehabilitation to their areas. Resistance often stems from fear, misinformation, and lack of civic planning. The government must initiate public awareness campaigns, hold community dialogues, and present a realistic picture of the benefits of urban renewal—not just for Dharavi, but for Mumbai as a whole. 

Moreover, the BMC must ensure transparency and inform all the developments to the stakeholders whose life is being reshaped by its projects. BMC should also play an active role in the decision making as the overarching sentiment amongst the residents is that this is a privately managed project by the Adani Group. 

If done right, Mumbai’s redevelopment could be a blueprint model for other cities aiming at inclusive urban growth. If done wrong, it risks becoming another chapter in the long history of displacement and environmental negligence.

**Mekhala Ranade is a Fourth Year student at National Law Institute University, Bhopal. She has keen interest in the field of Constitutional Law, Family Law, History and Public Policy. She is particularly drawn to analysing how laws shape and are shaped by the social and political contexts in which they operate. She was an intern with the Vidhi Maharashtra Team.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.